My friend Robert loves his map and train games! Last year, we re-played Pandemic Iberia (a cooperative hidden train game with a map: see our retro review here) and had a grand time! This year, we were able to play a new game that just came out with the last two months: Express Route. I ordered this from The Op’s website and it arrived a few weeks ago (Oct 2023).

Express Route is a cooperative 1-4 Player game where players work together to deliver packages under time constraints! (This is called a pick-up and deliver game). The joke throughout the night was “Is this how Amazon trains its staff to deliver packages?” This is a game all about delivering packages across America.

Unboxing

This is a surprisingly big box: it’s standard width and length (like a Ticket To Ride sized box), but it’s quite tall/thick! See our Coke can for perspective above and below.

The rulebook is shaped just like box .. see above.

Under the rulebook is a map and a bunch of cardboard punchouts.

The map is gigantic! See as it takes up the entire one side of my table! See the Coke can above for more perspective.

There’s quite a number of things to punch out: there’s five giant punch out boards! You punch out tokens, summaries, but mostly the packages! There are SO MANY little cardboard packages that come with this game. See below.

See some more tokens above.

There’s also a number of cards: player cards (left), upgrade cards (middle) and some bad news cards (called “Breaking News”, right).

There’s also numerous thicker boards (cargo: left, player: middle) and some wood tokens (right).

The components overall very functional (easy to read), but nothing in this game looks great or fabulous. I guess it’s very thematic for a package delivery: it just looks ordinary. Again, the game is very functional, it’s just not particularly good looking.

Rulebook

This rulebook isn’t bad, but I struggled a little with it.

This rulebook gets about a C+ or B- on the Chair Test. It flops open and makes it harder to read the edges (see above). The font isn’t small (so that’s good), but it isn’t big. It’s okay for readability on the chair test, and it does stay open. The pages just needs to be slightly smaller.

The intro is fine, and it has a link to learn the rules online: I prefer to learn from the rulebook, but some people prefer videos.

The Table of Contents is fine. There’s no Index (fail), but there are Appendices with some FAQ/extra info.

The components page is great!  There’s pictures with labels correlating the components! 

And a lot of people could learn from this set-up page!

• You can leave it open (see above) while you are setting it up!
• It spans two pages for the board: it seems necessary and proper that the board takes a full two pages
• The arrows do a good job of pointing to what’s relevant as you set-up

My only complaint about the set-up is that the steps weren’t numbered, but maybe they didn’t have to be!

The rest of the rules were okay, but they seemed very wordy.  Not sure if it was the font, the organization, lack of highlighting, lack of elaboration in some places?

One rule that seems like it needed more discussion was the Demand Track: there are three different actions depending on whether its green, yellow, or red. But, there were a number of questions we had: if you are in the red, do you do the green and yellow actions as well? (not clear: I am pretty sure the answer is no). And here’s some confusion about how to fill the telephone track as well.

And the back of the rulebook contained no good summaries: it was just empty.

This wasn’t a bad rulebook, but I struggled through about four games before I felt like I finally got everything. This wasn’t a complex game, but something about the rulebook (The organization? The Way rules were expressed? Lack of an Index?) just didn’t flow for me.

I learned the game. The rulebook was good enough for that, but be aware you may have to struggle a little though it.

Gameplay

Each player takes the role of a character in the game: each character (there are 11, see above) has a special set-up ability (usually a few more movement or loads), and then a special ability to use during the game.

All the players ares working together to deliver packages using the four vehicles (three trucks and one airplane) on the board. See the yellow, teal, brown, and white tokens on the board above. To be clear, no one player owns any vehicle: player share control of all delivery vehicles!!

Each vehicle has its own capacity: each truck starts with a capacity of 1 and can be upgraded to 2 (the airplane starts with 2 and can be upgraded to 3).

Players need to deliver packages to keep the demand under control: if the demand every reaches the top of the track (45 or 35, depending on unlocks), players all lose! Amazon has failed to deliver their packages and customers are very grumpy!

Every turn a bad news (“Breaking News”) happens which messes up the players: these get progressively worse as the game progresses.

And some new packages are placed on the map every turn, spiking demand!

Each player has 3 actions (denoted by the 3 batteries): they can move the vehicles a few spaces or load/unload: see the player board above.

If players can collectively deliver 4 normal packages and then another 4 packages (with special constraints), you win!

One of the ways the game is interesting is that you can spend packages to get upgrades! Even though you need 8 packages delivered to win, you will have to spend some of those deliveries to upgrade you vehicles speed, capacity, and other things! (Thematically, this feels weird: am I stealing packages and selling them to upgrade my business?????)

Players win if they deliver the proper 8 packages, but they lose if the demand spikes too high! Also problematic: If the Bad News (“Breaking News”) deck ever runs out, players all lose! Can your group deliver all the packages needed in time?

Solo Play

Solo Play is specified right up front on the components page! Thank you for following Saunders’ Law and having a viable solo mode!

The balance mechanism for one player or multiple players is simple: For every three actions the players take, a new package and a new Bad News card comes out! That’s it! So, it doesn’t matter how many players you have: every three actions taken by any player has the game respond the same way.

It took me a number of games to get the flow of the game. At first, the game felt impossible! I lost my first game badly, and I was afraid I could never win! It was at the point I realized you could trade delivered packages for upgrades, and then the light came on! The upgrades are essential to winning! I think I struggled with the upgrade rule because it seems so athematic: “I am going to sell some of my packages to upgrade my company!” Wait, is this legal?

I played a few more games and finally got the main flow, and I even won a game!

The game was decent solo: it allowed me to learn the game (modulo a few rules) so I could teach my friends. It felt pretty necessary to learn the same solo before playing in a group: there’s just too many rules to get down beforehand!

I don’t know if I’ll play Express Route again solo: that’s not necessarily the fault of the game, I am just not enamored with this theme.

Cooperative Play

Express Route was more fun with a group: we played our first group game with 4 people.

Because the balancing mechanism is so simple (bad news, package, 3 actions, repeat), playing multiple players didn’t seem to slow down the game too much. There was a lot of discussion about how the game worked, there was discussion about the long-term planning, there was discussion as we played. It was pretty fun.

One problem we had: there were a few places where if felt “a little” like the Alpha Player reared his ugly head (see the discussion of Alpha Player Syndrome if you don’t know what an Alpha Player is). It wasn’t a big deal, but there were some places were it felt like there was a little tension as we tried to decide the fate of our packages. This is definitely a game where you drink each other’s Kool-Aid: all players share control of the delivery vehicles, and there’s no way you can win unless you really work talk and work together!! This is not a multiplayer solitaire cooperative game by any means! That’s both good and bad, depending on what you want in a cooperative game.

My friends and I had fun playing cooperatively.

Four Way Thoughts

After we played, I reached out to my friends and asked for their reactions. It was kind of fun to watch the discussion: here’s what I saw!

“I never got a number score for (Express Route) the delivery game.  What do you think (out of 10)?  – Rich

“8?” – Becca

“You liked it that much? :)” – Rich

“I did like it and would be willing to play it again.  I haven’t played many co-op games though” – Becca

“7? definitely fun to play, fun theme, minor downside not sure I liked the dynamic of how you need to buy your way into the red part of the meter though maybe there’s a way to make sure you understand and use the card options you should buy” – Robert

“I am also a 7.  There were a few instructions that were unclear.  Flow was good.  Our game kept us strategizing the whole time.  I was concerned how quickly the meter shot into the red, but that kept us thinking the whole time.”

“Okay, yeah, 7 … all good points” – Becca

So, Express Route is a 7/10 from my friends!

I think I am just 6.5/10: I just don’t love the theme.  I also felt like only 3 actions per turn sometimes made it feel like you couldn’t do a lot on your turn. Despite those thoughts, the were some good moments, especially in the cooperative game.

Conclusion

Express Route is a good pick-up and delivery game: it’s very strategic and keeps players engaged as they play. Be aware that this game really needs everyone to stay involved to win: if you wanted a cooperative game where you do your own thing, this is not the game for you! Express Route demands everyone’s full attention if you want any chance to win … otherwise, you might be inviting the Alpha Player to your table.

My friends all liked Express Route more than I did, as they all gave it a 7/10! For me, the theme just doesn’t do a lot for me (and I wish I had more than 3 actions per turn), but I recognize the game is interesting, and I had some fun! I would give this only a 6.5/10, but realize I am in the minority: my friends liked it better. Caveat Emptor.

I will keep Express Route for my map-loving friends.